Scene 2

Before the house of Antipholus of Ephesus.

(Luciana; Antipholus of Syracuse; Dromio of Syracuse; Angelo)

Luciana tells Antipholus of Syracuse he should at least pretend he loves his wife, but he protests he has no wife and makes love to her instead. Dromio of Syracuse reports that a fat kitchen wench claimed him as her own, and told him of marks on his arms and shoulders, which made him fear she was a witch. Antipholus gives orders for Dromio to pack, planning to leave as soon as possible. Angelo the goldsmith, finding Antipholus of Syracuse in the street, gives him the chain, which Antipholus protests he has not ordered, but the goldsmith says he has ordered it 20 times. Angelo says he will come for the money when they meet at supper, though Antipholus remarks he had better take it at once. Antipholus thinks it an odd place where people give strangers chains of gold on the street. (149 lines)

Enter Luciana with Antipholus of Syracuse.

LUC.LUCIANA

And may it be that you have quite forgot

A husband’s office? Shall, Antipholus,

Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot?

Shall love, in building, grow so ruinous?

If you did wed my sister for her wealth,

Then for her wealth’s sake use her with more kindness:

Or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth,

Muffle your false love with some show of blindness:

Let not my sister read it in your eye;

Be not thy tongue thy own shame’s orator:

Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty;

Apparel vice like virtue’s harbinger;

Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted;

Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint;

Be secret-false: what need she be acquainted?

What simple thief brags of his own attaint?

’Tis double wrong, to truant with your bed,

And let her read it in thy looks at board:

Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed;

Ill deeds is doubled with an evil word.

Alas, poor women, make us but believe

(Being compact of credit) that you love us;

Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve:

We in your motion turn, and you may move us.

Then, gentle brother, get you in again;

Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife:

’Tis holy sport to be a little vain,

When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Sweet mistress—what your name is else, I know not,

Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine—

Less in your knowledge and your grace you show not

Than our earth’s wonder, more than earth divine.

Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak:

Lay open to my earthy gross conceit,

Smoth’red in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,

The folded meaning of your words’ deceit.

Against my soul’s pure truth why labor you,

To make it wander in an unknown field?

Are you a god? Would you create me new?

Transform me then, and to your pow’r I’ll yield.

But if that I am I, then well I know

Your weeping sister is no wife of mine,

Nor to her bed no homage do I owe:

Far more, far more, to you do I decline.

O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,

To drown me in thy sister’s flood of tears.

Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote;

Spread o’er the silver waves thy golden hairs,

And as a bed I’ll take them, and there lie,

And in that glorious supposition think

He gains by death that hath such means to die:

Let Love, being light, be drowned if she sink!

LUC.LUCIANA

What, are you mad, that you do reason so?

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Not mad, but mated—how, I do not know.

LUC.LUCIANA

It is a fault that springeth from your eye.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by.

LUC.LUCIANA

Gaze when you should, and that will clear your sight.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night.

LUC.LUCIANA

Why call you me love? Call my sister so.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Thy sister’s sister.

LUC.LUCIANA

That’s my sister.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

No;

It is thyself, mine own self’s better part:

Mine eye’s clear eye, my dear heart’s dearer heart,

My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope’s aim,

My sole earth’s heaven, and my heaven’s claim.

LUC.LUCIANA

All this my sister is, or else should be.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Call thyself sister, sweet, for I am thee:

Thee will I love and with thee lead my life;

Thou hast no husband yet, nor I no wife.

Give me thy hand.

LUC.LUCIANA

O soft, sir, hold you still;

I’ll fetch my sister to get her good will.

Exit.

Enter Dromio of Syracuse.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Why, how now, Dromio, where run’st thou so fast?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Do you know me, sir? Am I Dromio? Am I your man? Am I myself?

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art thyself.

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

I am an ass, I am a woman’s man, and besides myself.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

What woman’s man, and how besides thyself?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a woman: one that claims me, one that haunts me, one that will have me.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

What claim lays she to thee?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Marry, sir, such claim as you would lay to your horse, and she would have me as a beast; not that, I being a beast, she would have me, but that she, being a very beastly creature, lays claim to me.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

What is she?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

A very reverent body: ay, such a one as a man may not speak of without he say “Sir-reverence.” I have but lean luck in the match, and yet is she a wondrous fat marriage.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

How dost thou mean a fat marriage?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Marry, sir, she’s the kitchen wench and all grease, and I know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light. I warrant, her rags and the tallow in them will burn a Poland winter: if she lives till doomsday, she’ll burn a week longer than the whole world.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

What complexion is she of?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Swart, like my shoe, but her face nothing like so clean kept: for why? She sweats, a man may go over shoes in the grime of it.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

That’s a fault that water will mend.

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

No, sir, ’tis in grain, Noah’s flood could not do it.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

What’s her name?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Nell, sir; but her name and three quarters, that’s an ell and three quarters, will not measure her from hip to hip.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Then she bears some breadth?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip: she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

In what part of her body stands Ireland?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Marry, sir, in her buttocks, I found it out by the bogs.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Where Scotland?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

I found it by the barrenness, hard in the palm of the hand.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Where France?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

In her forehead, arm’d and reverted, making war against her heir.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Where England?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

I look’d for the chalky cliffs, but I could find no whiteness in them. But I guess, it stood in her chin, by the salt rheum that ran between France and it.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Where Spain?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Faith, I saw it not; but I felt it hot in her breath.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Where America, the Indies?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

O, sir, upon her nose, all o’er embellish’d with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the hot breath of Spain, who sent whole armadoes of carrects to be ballast at her nose.

S. ANT.ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?

S. DRO.DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

O, sir, I did not look so low. To conclude, this drudge or diviner laid claim to me, call’d me Dromio, swore I was assur’d to her, told me what privy marks I had about me, as the mark of my shoulder, the mole in my neck, the great wart on my left arm, that I, amaz’d, ran from her as a witch.

And I think, if my breast had not been made of faith, and my heart of steel,

She had transform’d me to a curtal dog, and made me turn i’ th’ wheel.